The Lady Venetia de Phillips, as the young woman used to call herself in the doll age, had never set foot in a common street car, or, indeed, in anything more public than a day coach on the suburban train; and in that only because the railroad had not found it profitable to provide as yet in that service a special coach for her class. For Mrs. Phillips, who had known what it was to ride in an Ottumwa buggy, comfortably cushioned by the stout arm of an Ottumwa swain, understood intuitively the cardinal principle of class evolution, which is separation. Therefore she had carefully educated her children according to that principle.
So it happened shortly before Mrs. Phillips had taken possession of her new home that Miss Phillips, wishing to pay a visit to her new friend who lived on the North Side of the city, was driving in her mother\'s victoria, in dignity, according to her estate. Beside her sat her favorite terrier, Pete, scanning the landscape of the dirty streets through which they were obliged to pass from the South to the North Side. Suddenly, as the carriage turned a corner, Pete spied a long, lank wharf rat, of a kind that did not inhabit his own more cleanly neighborhood. The terrier took one impulsive leap between the wheels of the victoria, and was off up Illinois Street after the rat. It was a good race; the Lady Venetia\'s sporting blood rose, and she ordered the coachman to follow. Suddenly there dashed from an alley a light baker\'s wagon, driven by a reckless youth. Pete, unmindful of the clattering wagon, intent upon his loping prey, was struck full in the middle of his body: two wheels passed diagonally across him, squeezing him to the pavement like an india-rubber ball. For a moment he lay there stretched in the street, and then he dragged himself to the sidewalk, filling the air with hideous howls. The passers-by stopped, but the reckless youth in the baker\'s wagon, having leaned out to see what damage had been done, grinned, shook his reins, and was off.
Before the coachman had brought the victoria to a full stop Venetia was out and across the street. Pete had crawled into an alley, where he lay in a little heap, moaning. When his mistress tried to gather him into her skirt he whimpered and showed his teeth. Something was radically wrong! The small boys who had gathered advised throwing Pete into the river, and offered to do the deed. But Venetia, the tears falling from her eyes, turned back into the street to take counsel with the coachman. A young man who was hurrying by, swinging a little satchel and whistling to himself, stopped.
"What\'s up?" he asked, ceasing to whistle at sight of the girl\'s tears.
Venetia pointed to the dog, and the stranger, pushing the small boys aside, leaned over Pete.
"Gee! he\'s pretty well mashed, ain\'t he? Here, Miss, I\'ll give him a smell of this and send him to by-by."
He opened his little satchel and hunted for a bottle. Venetia timidly touched his arm.
"Please don\'t kill him!"
"That\'s just what I\'m going to do, sure thing!" He paused, with the little vial in his hand, and looked coolly at the girl. "You don\'t want the pup to suffer like that?"
"But can\'t he be saved?"
The stranger looked again at Pete, then back at Venetia. Finally he tied a handkerchief over the dog\'s mouth, and began to examine him carefully.
"Let\'s see what there\'s left of you after the mix-up, Mr. Doggie. We\'ll give you the benefit of our best attention and skill,—more\'n most folks ever get in this world,—because you are the pet of a nice young lady. If you were just an alley-cat, you wouldn\'t even get the chloroform. Well, Miss, he\'d have about one chance in a hundred, after he had that hind leg cut off."
"Are you a doctor? Do you think that you could cure him? Mamma will be very glad to pay you for your services."
"Is that so?" the stranger remarked. "How do you know that my services don\'t come too high for your mother\'s purse? Well, come on, pup! We\'ll see what can be done for you."
Drawing the improvised muzzle tighter, he gathered Pete up in a little bundle. Then he strode down the street to the west. The coachman drew up beside the curb and touched his hat.
"Won\'t you get in?" Venetia asked.
"It\'s only a step or so to my place," he answered gruffly. "You can follow me in the carriage."
But she kept one hand on Pete, and walked beside the stranger until he stopped at an old, one-story, wooden cottage. Above the door was painted in large black letters, "S. COBURN, M.D., PHYSICIAN AND SURGEON."
"May I come in?" the girl asked timidly.
"Sure! Why would I keep you sitting on the door-step?"
Inside there was a little front hall apparently used as a waiting-room for patients. Back of this was a large bare room, occupying the remaining floor space of the cottage, into which the doctor led the way. A wooden bench extended the entire length of this room underneath a row of rough windows, which had been cut in the wall to light the bench. Over in one corner was a cot, with the bedclothes negligently dragging on the floor. Near by was an iron sink. On a table in the centre of the room, carefully guarded by a glass case, was a complex piece of mechanism which looked to the girl like one of the tiresome machines her teacher of physics was wont to exhibit.
"My laboratory," the doctor explained somewhat grandly.
Venetia stepped gingerly across the cluttered floor, glancing about with curiosity. The doctor placed the dog on the table and turned on several electric lights.
"You\'ll have to help at this performance," he remarked, taking off his coat.
Together they gave Pete an opiate and removed the muzzle. The doctor then turned him over and poked him here and there.
"Well," he pronounced, "Pete has a full bill. Compound fracture, broken rib, and mashed toes. And I don\'t know what all on the inside. He has a slim chance of limping around on three legs. Shall I give him some more dope? What do you say?"
"Pete was a gamy dog," Venetia replied thoughtfully. "I think he would like to have all his chances."
"Good!" The doctor tossed aside the sponge that he had held ready to give Pete his farewell whiff. He told the girl how to hold the dog, and how to touch the sponge to his nose from time to time. They were absorbed in the operation when the coachman pushed his way into the room.
"What shall I do, Miss, about the horses? Mis\' Phillips gave particler instructions I wasn\'t to stay out after five-thurty. It\'s most that now."
"Tell him to go home," the doctor ordered. "We\'ll be an hour more."
"But how shall I get home then?" the girl asked, perplexed.
"On your feet, I guess, same as most folks," the doctor answered, testing a knife on his finger. "And the cars ain\'t stopped running on the South Side, have they?"
"I don\'t know. I never use them," Venetia replied helplessly.
The doctor put the knife down beside Pete and looked at the girl from her head to her feet, a teasing smile creeping over his swarthy face.
"Well, it\'s just about time for you to find out what they\'re good for. I\'ll take you home myself just to see how you like them. You won\'t get hurt, not a bit. You may go, Thomas!" He waved his hand ironically to the coachman. "And when you go out, be good enough to slip the latch. We have a little business to attend to in here, and don\'t want to be interrupted."
When the coachman had left, Venetia turned to the doctor with a red face, and copying her mother\'s most impressive tones, asked:—
"What would you like me to do now, Dr. Coburn?"
"Nothing special. Turn your back if you don\'t like to see me take a chop out of doggie."
He laughed at her dignity; therefore she kept her face turned resolutely on poor Pete. She could not help being interested in the man as she watched his swift movements. The doctor was stocky and short, black-haired, with a short black mustache that did not disguise the perpetual sardonic smile of his lips. She noticed that his trousers were very baggy and streaked at the bottoms with mud. They were the trousers of a man who, according to her experience, was not a gentleman. The frayed cravat, which showed its cotton filling, belonged to the same category as the trousers. But there was something in the fierce black eyes, the heavy jaw, the nervous grip of the lips when the man was thinking, that awed the girl. The more Venetia looked at him, the more she was afraid of him;............